Song of the Wolf and the Lioness
by Lena Liz Carter
Summary: In some universes, Eve Baird has never become the Guardian. In some universes Jacob Stone answered the call ten years earlier. In some universes Cassandra Cillian is the worst version of herself. But in most of the universes, if not in all of them, their paths cross and that's when the whole universe holds it's breath and waits for its fate to be decided...
1. Prologue

**This massive AU plot bunny bothered me for quite a while. I think most of the universe is self-explanatory. It's mostly based on Librarian!Jake universe in And the Loom of Fate, only in this one Eve never got an envelope from the Library. The rest is explained as the fic goes on.**

 **Warnings: Major character deaths (not all of them off-screen), angst, angst, angst, some mild sexual scenes, mentions of mental illness.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

Eve had seen this moment in her dreams every couple of months since she was a child. She was laying on her back in a shallow stream, looking at her fingers stained with red. Now, when it was actually happening, she couldn't believe it at first. But the pain in her leg was real and so were the shouts of the Brotherhood soldiers searching for her.

She tried to get the facts straight. First the past. She had escaped captivity, fifteen minutes ago she was shot on the run and since then she had forced her injured leg to carry her as she stumbled through the forest. Moments ago she had slipped on the long grass on the bank of the stream and fell.

Second, what was happening right now. Her leg was throbbing and she was shaking, a little from the cold, but mostly from the pain and exhaustion. She had lost a lot of blood and could barely move. The shouting was drawing closer.

 _It's over,_ she thought. _All those times I wondered how it was going to end, I have never thought it would be exactly like the dream._

The change in the intonation of the shouts told her that she had been spotted. In last desperate effort she tried to move, but fell back in the stream, her muscles screaming in protest. A male face, twisted with the excitement of the hunt, appeared above her, gloating. Then two strong hands pulled him from her view. The tone of the shouts changed from victorious to angry and she heard a dog growling.

Moments later the shouts died out and it was quiet. _This is nice,_ she thought, looking at the blue sky and green trees. _I don't mind this being the last thing I see._

Unfortunately, another person bent over her and his hands were examining the wound on her leg. Her vision was rapidly fading and she was welcoming the unconsciousness. She felt being lifted off the ground, but wasn't sure whether it was for real or a hallucination.

The last thing she heard was, in distinctive Southern accent:

"Damn, you're heavy."


	2. Lioness Meets Wolf

She woke up on an old sofa in a dark cabin. It was a single room, lit by a fireplace and a kerosene lamp on the table. A man in a plaid shirt stood with his back to her and seemed to be cooking something on an old gas cooker. The place seemed safe enough, so Eve decided to assess the damage and tried to move.

The gunshot wound in her leg flared up like she stuck a red-hot iron in there and she hissed in pain. Other places, presumable those which took the worst impact when she fell in the stream, hurt too, but it was nothing compared to her leg. Plus, she was thirsty and hungry. All and all, she was alive with all her limbs where they were supposed to be and no immediate threat to her life, but that was about everything positive that could be said about the situation.

Her movement attracted the attention of the man. He walked over to her and felt her forehead. Eve studied his face, not old, but not exactly young either, weathered, honest, but there was something hard in his blue eyes. _He looks like a hero from an old cowboy movie_ , she thought.

"No fever," he said. "That's good. I don't have any antibiotics here."

"Who are you? Where am I? What happened?" she asked, her voice raspy from the thirst.

"I'm Jacob Stone, the Librarian," he replied, adding his profession as if it was a part of his name, and handed her a cup of tea. "You're still in the war zone in Ukraine, about a mile from the stream where you passed out. This cabin was abandoned, so I made it my base of operations for the time being. And as to your last question, I was going to ask you the same thing. How the hell did you end up being chased by five Brotherhood soldiers across the forest?"

Eve looked down at her clothes and realized that she was still wearing the civilian clothes she had worn for the undercover operation in Lviv that had gone exquisitely pear-shaped. In her torn jeans and used-to-be-gray shirt she must have been a rare sight in the middle of the war zone.

"I was undercover," she confessed. "Things went wrong, my team was killed, I was captured. I escaped, they chased me, they shot me, I fell and that's all I remember."

"Well, we found you and we didn't fancy the way those men were looking at you," Jacob Stone smiled impishly. "So we thought, hey we can save a lady and get rid of five Brotherhood members at the same time, this must be our lucky day."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, ma'am."

Eve, with some help from Jacob, managed to sit up. "So, where are your friends?"

"Who? Oh, I was talking in plural, of course. No, it's just me and Rubens. C'mere, boy, come and say hi to Miss...?"

"Colonel," she corrected him. "Colonel Eve Baird."

"Nice to meet you, Colonel Eve Baird. Rubens, come and say hi to Miss Colonel." And there was the impish smile again, but she noticed it didn't quite reach his eyes.

Rubens crawled out from under the table. He turned out to be a dog, a big gray shaggy thing, who got drool all over Eve's face and made her immediately fall in love with him. Jacob left her scratching the dog and brought her dinner, which consisted of scrambled eggs, slightly stale bread and half a sausage.

"Sorry, it's not much. I was planning the provisions only for myself," he apologized.

But Eve, who had spent the last three days enjoying the hospitality of the Brotherhood Army, gobbled it up like it was the best thing she had ever tasted.

"So," she said, wiping the plate clean with the last piece of her bread, "how does a librarian end up in the middle of a forest in Ukraine?"

"Well, you might have guessed – I am a special kind of librarian," he winked.

She raised her eyebrows slightly and gave him her best questioning look, but he just took her plate and went to wash it in an old battered sink.

"I heard the Red Prophet is captive in Nitra," he said, his back still turned to her.

Eve felt her heart skip a beat. Was this all an elaborate trap? How did he know about the most powerful and the most mysterious member of the Brotherhood? And why the hell was he asking about her of all things?

The dreamy, detached face of the Red Prophet flashed in front of Eve's eyes. _You shall meet a wolf..._

"The Red Prophet, huh?" she replied, trying to sound casual. "Why so interested in her?"

"I've met her before." There was something in his tone telling Eve that there was a whole story behind those four words.

"So did I," she told him. "She told you a prophecy, didn't she? It's a pretty good scare tactic."

"It's not a scare tactic," he shook his head and kept washing the pristine plate. "Everything she says will happen eventually."

Eve felt nauseated. The things the Prophet told her... she never foretold happiness, only grief - the one thing Eve Baird had had enough of.

"But that's not why I'm interested in her," Jacob added. "I never thought she would let herself be caught."

"Only she didn't," Eve blurted out. Then she considered how much she could reveal. She needed this special kind of librarian and she felt that if she was about to ask him for help with crossing the war zone, she might as well give him at least a bit of the truth. "They have a new weapon, something deadlier than anything we've fought so far. They need something to activate it, something hidden in Vienna HQ. I think she realized that the easiest way in was to get captured."

Jacob turned around, his face dark. "How long before she is transferred from Nitra to Vienna?"

"Days," Eve estimated. "That is if she isn't there or on her way already. I don't have more than a week. I have to get to one of our camps and warn them."

"You shouldn't walk on that leg," he shook his head.

"Damn my leg, if she gets it, it's all over! With _that thing_ in their hands we're all dead by September!" she yelled. How could he think about something so trivial?

"Isn't there another way to get a message to them?" he continued, calm and methodical.

"Do I look like I have a radio on me?" she exclaimed. "Wait, of course I do, I'm just running through the woods because calling extraction is for wussies!"

"Calm down, Miss Colonel, I'm just checking all the possibilities. Counting in your leg, it's two days walk to the nearest Allied camp, if they haven't moved it. And the woods will be swarming with soldiers. But it can be done," he concluded, "if Rubens and I go with you."

"G-go with me?" she stuttered. She had expected map, information about the Brotherhood and the Allies, some provisions at best, she would never ask him to actually _join_ her.

"Yeah, sure. I'm done here anyway and I need to get out of here too. With the two of us we might be able to even get some sleep before we get out of the war zone. We set out tomorrow, no arguments," he raised his finger, because she had already been opening her mouth to protest. "We'll need all the speed we can get and tired people are slow. Go to sleep, you never know when you'll have the next opportunity."


	3. Wolf with No Pack

Jacob woke before dawn, while Miss Colonel on the sofa still slept. She was curled under the thin blanket and looked cold.

 _Doesn't matter, she'll warm up on the road,_ he thought and put the kettle on. They had time for a quick cup of tea before leaving.

He had prepared his own pack yesterday, but now he found another one in the closet. It must have belonged to the previous owner of the cabin and wasn't much, but it allowed them to take some more food, bandages and a blanket with them. Besides, Colonel Eve would give him hell if he didn't let her carry anything.

The kettle whistled and as he was pouring the water in the cups, he noticed her stirring on the sofa.

"How's your leg?" he asked.

Eve gave it an experimental wiggle and grimaced. "Not great, but it'll have to do."

He handed her a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits. "Pull your pants down, I'll redress it."

"It's okay," Eve protested, suddenly shy.

"If you're worried about me seeing your underwear, I have to remind you that I saw it yesterday when I was trying to stitch that," he pointed to her leg. "Get them off."

With some more squirming she did. She hadn't bled through the bandages overnight and the wound wasn't inflamed, which was a small miracle, considering he had stitched it with a fishing line and the only disinfectant he had had was his last bottle of brandy.

"Looks good," he said. "The wound, I mean," he added after a pointed look from Eve. "Get dressed and eat your breakfast, I want to do five miles by noon."

He was surprised when they really did walk those five miles before noon. Her leg was obviously giving her trouble, but she gritted her teeth and pushed on. Jacob couldn't help but admire her resolve. She would never ask for it, but he announced a break at noon.

"I can go more," she argued.

"We are doing well," he smiled. "We can rest for a bit."

"We don't have time."

He offered her a bit of stale bread with some cheese. "This is a marathon, not a sprint. Collapsing halfway through won't help anyone."

Eve chewed her bread sullenly for a minute before she asked: "Where did you meet the Prophet?"

A memory of an enthusiastic smile and a floral skirt flashed before his eyes. "In New York, many years ago," he replied. He could give Eve as much.

"What happened?"

Even he felt how forced his smile was as he scratched Rubens just to have something to do with his hands. "Why do you think something happened?"

"Bad things happen whenever the Prophet shows up," she replied, looking at the last bit of bread in her hand.

"No," he whispered. "It wasn't like this. Not back than."

"Oh my god..." Eve gasped quietly. "You knew her before she became the Prophet."

Jacob didn't answer. He was too busy thinking about two boys and two girls, all wide-eyed and excited to save the world twice before Friday, about all those glorious victories and laughter echoing through the Library. They had had it all, intelligence and instinct, brain and brawn, slyness and strength. They had been a whirlwind, conquering the world head-on, and no enemy could withstand them.

He shook his head. That was gone, all gone, and he was alone with a broken world to take care of and the knowledge that they had been the ones who broke it.

"What she said to me," Eve told him. "It was not nice."

"It usually isn't," he smirked. He got a prophecy of his own, knew it by heart. _One fleeting moment of glory, one grief, one last goodbye_ _..._ For a moment he was tempted to ask Eve what her prophecy was, but he hadn't known her long enough to ask this kind of questions.

"But is it true, what you said yesterday? I mean, is it going to come true?" she wondered.

"As far as I know she is pretty accurate. She has never been much of a liar." _Yes, she was amazing in hiding things, but not at lying,_ he thought. _Never at lying._

He looked up and saw Eve seriously shaken. Whatever the prophecy was, it must've been real bad. _Worse than mine?_ crossed his mind for a second, before he gathered his pack, got up and offered her a hand.

"Don't think about it. You can't change it anyway. That's the thing about prophecies – you can't tell when they're coming true, only afterwards, when it's too late to do something about it."

He walked first so that she couldn't see his face. The memories were forcing him to pay them attention and he needed a moment alone to banish them back to the forgotten parts of his brain where they belonged.

 _With the breeze blowing through her dark hair and sunset in her eyes his Guardian looked like Queen Dido reborn._

" _How do you do it? Keep your demons at bay?" he asked._

 _She smiled with all the sadness of Niobe and breathed in the wind coming from the sea Odysseus had sailed. "I don't," she said. "I run from them. And I never ever stop."_

Later, after losing the Library, he followed her advice. He hadn't stopped running since that day.

And another, a memory of a different place and different time and a different woman.

" _You let her die!" she screamed at him, tears running down her face._

" _Whatever would come out of there wouldn't be her. Rule number one – nothing can bring back the dead."_

" _So now you decide who lives and dies, Jacob Stone? And what about me, huh? Will you allow me to live or will you let me die?"_

He fought to regain control but of course a last memory slipped through. The most painful one, the memory of a friend dying in his arms.

" _We can help you, we can figure something out..." she weeped._

" _You can't just steal some life for me," the dying boy smiled and held her hand. "It's not right."_

" _I don't care!" she screamed. "We have all the power in the world just sitting here, we shouldn't have to die just because we're afraid to use it."_

" _Trust me, it's not worth it," the boy tried to console her, even though he was the one with a bullet hole in his chest. "Escape route's too tricky, too easy to cut off."_

 _Those were his last words. He drew his last breath a minute later, still being held by his two best friends. When Jacob closed his eyes, she got up, staring at him with cold, unforgiving eyes._

" _This one's on you," she told him._

" _He knew..."_

" _No," she interrupted him. "If you let me use the Spear, he'd be alive right now. He's dead because of you, Jake. Don't you dare make excuses."_

"Jacob?" Eve's voice pulled him out of his memories. "Are you okay?"

"I... No." It slipped out before he knew what he was saying.

"The Prophet?"

He nodded. "It's a long story."

"Will you tell me?"

"One day," he promised. Somehow he felt that the story would be safe with Eve Baird. "Not today. I need to focus and there are some names that distract me too much."

But those names were already echoing through his head.

 _Ezekiel Jones. Lamia. Cassandra Cillian._

Mostly Cassandra Cillian.


	4. Lioness Defeated

**Please, review! What do you think? Do you like this Jacob and Eve?**

* * *

Eve was woken from her uneasy sleep by a hand clasped over her mouth. Before she could properly fight it, Jacob hissed in her ear:

"Lie still, there's a patrol passing us."

She peeked through the bushes hiding their small camp. It was almost dawn, so she could discern the two soldiers walking through the undergrowth some fifty meters from them. Jacob was like a statue next to her, also watching them, one hand on Rubens' neck. The dog lay on the ground, ears flat against his skull, his lips trembling with a growl he didn't dare to let out.

All three of them stayed immobile for at least fifteen minutes to make sure that the patrol was really gone.

It took another ten minutes for Eve's heartbeat to slow down to a normal rate.

 _They are not going to catch me again_ , she promised herself. _I can make it to the camp. I won't let their deaths be in vain._

Thankfully, Jacob didn't notice. He gave her a meager breakfast and checked her leg again. It hurt like hell, but the images she had seen in the Brotherhood camp would keep her going through much worse pain.

"How far today?" she asked.

"Not as far as yesterday, but it'll be trickier. More patrols, possibly land mines," he replied laconically.

Eve did what she could to hide any trace of fear. "Sucky pep talk. You have a plan?"

"Not get caught, not get blown up."

"Well, aren't you all rainbows and sunshine today." She grimaced and started packing.

They walked mostly in silence, both lost in their thoughts. Eve tried not to think about her captivity. Three days in the Brotherhood camp, being asked questions, refusing to answer them. Wishing she had died in the explosion with the others. With Sam... No, she wouldn't think about Sam. She should be glad that she made it out alive, even though no one else did.

Rubens' warning growl alerted them to the presence of another patrol before the soldiers spotted them, but they were in an open forest with nowhere to hide. They had only one option – attack. She exchanged a quick glance with Jacob to make sure they were on the same page before they both ran forward.

This patrol was four men instead of two, but Eve and Jacob had the element of surprise. She punched the first man before he realized what was going on, gripped his ears and kneed him in the face as hard as she could manage. Unfortunately, to do that she had to put all her weight on her injured leg, which didn't react well. Eve staggered and almost fell down. Another soldier was already coming at her, but Rubens bit his leg, slowing him down, and Jacob appeared out of nowhere and tackled him. She got to her feet and noticed another soldier going for Jacob. Limping forward, she managed to punch him in the gut seconds before he could grab Jacob. Then she whirled around, ready to face more enemies, and she sensed Jacob doing the same thing behind her back, but there were no more enemies to be fought.

"Good job," she turned to Jacob.

"You too," he grinned at her and it was probably the most genuine happy expression she had seen on his face so far. She understood him. It was rare to find someone who worked with you as well as the two of them worked together. They automatically covered each other's back and adapted to each other's moves in the matter of moments.

"You fight well for a librarian," she teased him.

"And you would make one hell of a Guardian," he retorted before he paled a little and his smile disappeared.

"What's a Guardian?" she asked.

"Not something you want to be," he growled. "Rubens, come here, boy. Are you okay?"

"Freeze!"

Eve cursed herself for not checking the surroundings before letting her guard down and slowly raised her hands and turned around to face the two men aiming at them. First she noticed the familiar pattern of their uniforms, then she noticed that their weapons were standard army-issued M4s.

"Wait, I'm Colonel Eve Baird, I'm with NATO," she yelled.

It took a couple more minutes of radio confirmations and squabbling before the soldiers acknowledged Eve as an ally and agreed to take her to the nearest camp. Another five minutes were lost to persuading them to take Jacob with them.

"He doesn't have any sort of security clearance," one of them argued.

"I'm granting him one."

"He can be a spy."

"If he is, I will answer for it."

"But we will be the ones who brought him in."

"Look, we're in bit of a hurry here..."

"The location of the camp is top secret."

At this point Eve had had enough. She turned to Jacob. "Can you hotwire a jeep?" she asked. Jacob, albeit a bit confused, nodded. "Perfect. So, you two," she told the soldiers, "you can drive us to the camp or we take the car and you walk home and explain your superiors why you didn't do as you were told. Your choice."

She saw in their defeated looks that they were going to make the right choice.

"Even the dog?" one of them asked with a last feeble tone of protest.

Eve looked at Rubens, who still had blood on his muzzle from the bite that saved her life. Honestly, she couldn't have wished for better companions for this journey than the special kind of librarian and his pet.

" _Especially_ the dog," she told the soldier.

* * *

"Colonel Baird," the silver haired man saluted her.

"Colonel Satley," she returned the salute. "I trust that you know about my mission."

"We've been informed, yes. But the message spoke about a team," he glanced at Jacob, who tried to blend with the canvas of the command tent.

"There was a team," Eve said darkly. _Don't think about it. Not now._

Satley's horrified expression didn't exactly take her mind off things. "I heard Captain Denning was with you. His cousin serves under me."

"He was. I was the only one who wasn't in our safe house when it blew up." _Don't think about Sam,_ she told herself and forced her brain to focus on the thing she came here for. "Right now we have more pressing matters. I need you to send a message to Nitra. The Red Prophet is not to be moved under any circumstances."

"She is not in Nitra," Colonel Satley said and Eve felt like she had been just punched in the stomach. "They sent her to Vienna four days ago."

"So send a message to Vienna and get her out of there. She must not be allowed to stay there!" Eve urged him, but when she saw the way he bit his lip, even the last bit of hope left her.

"She escaped yesterday," he said, confirming everything Eve dreaded.

She felt her knees buckle, but Jacob was there to catch her. He helped her in a chair, kept one hand on her shoulder to keep her steady and turned to the Colonel.

"Did she take anything with her?" he asked.

"Just a golden cup, an antique. She passed things ten times it's value and took only that one cup. Probably liked how shiny it was, I heard she's a proper cuckoo."

Eve felt Jacob's grip on her shoulder tighten and when she looked up, she saw him eying her questioningly. She nodded and watched as all the tension, all the will to fight left him in an instant.

"What is it?" he asked her and his voice sounded hollow. "What does it get her?"

"A dragon."


	5. Wolf's Story

**So the longest chapter (and the smuttiest, even though by fanfiction standard it's still quite pure) is here. Opinions? Reviews? Anyone, please? This story means so much to me and it has no feedback whatsoever...**

* * *

 _So she got herself a dragon..._ Jacob thought as he settled on a hill overlooking the camp.

He hadn't seen Eve for the past two hours. After the meeting with Colonel Satley she was ushered to the infirmary to have her leg properly treated. That left Jacob and Rubens alone in the camp where everyone was giving them odd looks, so he cleared out of there and found himself a place on the hill.

He watched Eve limp out of a supply tent with something under her jacket and couldn't help but admire her. She had gone two days with a bullet hole in her leg, even fought on that leg, found out that all her men died for nothing because she was too late and she still looked like she was going to punch the dragon in the face and save the day. It was a good thing, she looked better with a warrior's look on her face than the crumpled, desperate shell of a woman he had seen in Colonel Satley's tent.

She walked up the hill and collapsed next to him. Without a word she pulled a bottle of brandy from her jacket, took a swig and passed it to Jacob.

"Should you be drinking on the painkillers?" he asked and accepted the drink.

"I didn't get any. They're short on medical supplies, so they keep the painkillers for those who need it the most. The medic prescribed me this instead," she replied.

The brandy burned in his throat, but it was a good burning. It eased the weight threatening to crush him.

"They are sending some kind of an expert on supernatural down here," she continued.

"Honestly, I don't think you can get a better expert on supernatural than myself," Jacob smiled. "It's sort of my job."

"You really are a special kind of librarian," she laughed as she took the bottle back.

"I am _the_ Librarian," he corrected her and in the next five minutes he explained everything about the Library.

"So that's how you met her?" Eve asked. "On a job for the Library?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that. You remember how I told you there's ever only one Librarian at the time? Well, forget that. Ten years ago the Library picked three – me, Ezekiel Jones and Cassandra Cillian. On our first time out we got a Guardian, who was supposed to be our bodyguard and the voice of reason. She was originally with the villains, but when they killed our previous Guardian, Nicole, she betrayed them and joined us. Her name was Lamia," he sighed at the memory of her smile, her laughter, her kiss...

"You were close," Eve observed.

Jacob left that without an answer. Instead, he continued: "We fitted together perfectly, the four of us. Where one of us was lacking, another one excelled. We were unstoppable, until the day Ezekiel died." He paused, trying to find the right words. "It was stupid. The bullet was meant for Cassandra, but he jumped in front of her and took it. She has always blamed me for it. You see, she dabbled in magic a lot and I disagreed. She tried to persuade me to use a magical artifact for that mission, I refused and things went wrong, which probably wouldn't have happened with the artifact, so Cassandra deduced that Ezekiel's death was my fault.

After he died, we were struggling. Without him we had weak spots, we kept making stupid mistakes and every other mission ended in a shouting match between me and Cassandra. To make things worse, the brain tumor she had had since fifteen started growing again. It's no wonder she snapped."

"Snapped?" Eve raised her eyebrows.

"She joined the Serpent Brotherhood. You know them today simply as the Brotherhood. They gave her magic, healed her and more. What used to be synesthesia and occasional hallucinations and super-math turned to full-blown visions of the future. Then, when Lamia and I refused to join her, she tried to steal the Library. To keep it out of the Brotherhood's hands, the Library was disconnected from this reality. Now all it's magic, all it's information and artifacts are lost and wild magic is released to the world." He paused and took another gulp of the brandy. "I would've tried to forgive all that, if she hadn't done that one thing.

Before she left, she killed Lamia."

He could still see it, even today. Lamia in a pool of blood, staring at the ceiling with blank eyes, and Cassandra, dressed all in red, stopping for a moment and delivering her prophecy, before she disappeared forever.

"Is that why you asked me about her? The first day, you were the one who brought her up," Eve reminded him. "Do you want revenge?"

He had thought about it, in the long days after, when the memories didn't let him sleep, but he wasn't sure. The woman who wreaked havoc all over the world for the past year couldn't be Cassandra Cillian. Cassandra Cillian was floral skirts, equations too complicated for anyone to grasp and prosciutto and cucumbers. The Red Prophet was ruthless strategy, the dry, barren land of past battlefields and Lamia's blood on his hands. She was systematically destroying all they had built it the past ten years, killed his girl, was responsible for the state the world was in, and yet...

And yet she was all he had left in the world.

"What do _you_ want to do?" he asked Eve instead.

"To find her and stop her before she actually uses the dragon," Eve replied. "It's the only way I can do right by my men." She hesitated, then suddenly she reached out and held his hand. "I'd love you to come with me. But I understand if you don't want to."

"I don't trust myself when it comes to her," he whispered. The idea of fighting Cassandra, hell, even the idea of seeing her again scared the crap out of him.

"Well, you can fight the dragon, I'll fight the girl who weighs about hundred pounds soaking wet."

He chuckled. This was his job, keeping magic in check. As a Librarian without the Library, helping Eve was the least he could do.

"Count us in," he nodded and they toasted their new partnership.

In a couple of minutes two soldiers came to tell them that they should stay within the camp, so they moved the party to Eve's tent. Now, when the plan was decided and it was probably the most desperate thing either of them had ever done, they drank until there was nothing to drink.

The brandy was strong and it went to his head fast. In the yellow light of a single lamp Eve looked like an angel and he suddenly became aware of the fact that they were both sitting on her bed, only inches apart.

"You're pretty, Miss Colonel," he told her.

"You don't look so bad yourself," she blushed, something she would never do sober.

"Your eyes are like opals," he continued and held her hand.

"And you're drunk," she giggled.

That's when he kissed her.

She was taken by surprise at first, but she returned the kiss soon enough. It was sloppy and with a bit too much drool, but they were too drunk and desperate to care. After a moment he pulled back and looked her in the eye.

"Now I get the Little Red Riding Hood," she whispered. "There _are_ dangerous things in the woods."

"Don't you worry, Miss Colonel," he smiled. "There are also huntsmen in the woods."

"And who are you?" she asked. "A wolf or a huntsman?"

"I am whoever you want me to be," he replied and this time she kissed him.

He buried one hand in her hair and when her lips parted and her tongue slipped in his mouth, he pulled a little. She responded by kissing him even harder. He lowered her on the bed and his hand left her hair to sneak under her shirt and cup one of her breasts. She moaned quietly in his mouth, which made him squeeze harder and she paused for a second. _Maybe I'm going too fast,_ he thought and wanted to back away when she grasped his ass and wrapped her legs around him and suddenly Jacob was seconds away from losing control. He needed it, to let go of all the frustration and despair, to not think for a moment, but was this what she wanted? They had to make this clear now, or in a few minutes he wouldn't be able to think about anyone but himself.

"Eve..." he said, his voice raspy to his own ears.

"Just for this one night," she whispered. "I don't care what happens in the morning. Just make me forget."

As she looked at him, beautiful and brave and as desperate as he was, he felt something stir in his chest, something that had been quiet ever since Lamia's death. Eve's hair was golden in the light of the lamp and she felt too perfect for words. But there was a half-formed thought in his mind, more an uneasy feeling than coherent reasoning, nagging him like an itch on his brain, and he couldn't quite grasp what caused it.

"Jacob," Eve reached to caress his face, misinterpreting his silence for hesitation. "I'm a big girl. I know all the risks and I know what I want. Right now, it's you. That is, if you want me."

"Who wouldn't want you?" he asked, once again focusing on her and only on her. In his inebriated state he was easy to distract.

"Then why are you staring at me instead of doing something?"

He grinned and started doing something.

A few minutes later, when both their shirts were on the floor, he managed to pinpoint the source of his uneasiness. _You shall meet a lioness with a mane of gold and you shall fall for her,_ Cassandra had told him among the shelves of the Library on the last day.

 _Oh fuck,_ he thought.

Then Eve directed his hand between her legs and all rational thoughts fled his head.


	6. Lioness Prepares for Battle

**Another character appears, one you know very well! Please, review, I really want to know what you think. Thanks!**

* * *

Eve woke up in someone's arms and wondered whether she had made up with Sam. She turned her head to see, which caused a nasty headache, but it didn't stop her from noticing that the arms around her were Jacob Stone's.

 _Oh fuck,_ she thought.

Her movement woke him and he lazily smiled at her. She noticed that he had a habit of never showing his teeth when he smiled. It reminded her of something.

 _You shall meet a wolf with sharp teeth hidden in his smile and you shall fall for him,_ the Red Prophet told her.

Panic seized her and she tried to get up as fast as possible, only she got tangled in the blanket and fell off the bed. Jacob blinked at her sleepily.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

When she looked at him now, she tried to convince herself that she did not fall for him. He was attractive and she had needed a distraction, that was all there was to it. The Prophet had not been talking about Jacob Stone.

"Eve, are you okay?" His voice brought her to the reality.

"I'm fine, just... I just remembered something from the prophecy..." she blurted out and picked herself up from the ground.

"What, she told you you'd sleep with me?" he asked, obviously amused.

"No, not that. Never mind. I was wrong," she shook her head.

She had slept with men without an ounce of affection, but she had always been looking for something they couldn't give her. Sam had tried so hard, but he still failed. She wasn't sure what was it she craved so much, but it certainly was not the way Jacob offered to help her, even against his former friend, because it was the right thing to do. The way he caught her when her knees buckled. The way they understood each other in the fight and, as it turned out, in bed too.

It was _not_ the way he smiled at her when she climbed back in the bed with him.

It might have been a wrong decision, but even if he really was the man from the prophecy, she was already going to hell. So why not enjoy the ride? With the Prophet having a dragon it was going to be short anyway.

* * *

The expert on supernatural arrived shortly before Eve and Jacob emerged from the tent, ignoring the stifled laughter of the soldiers and heading straight for command. Colonel Satley introduced them to a white-haired man, who, even in the war times, was wearing a bow tie.

"Colonel Baird, Mr. Stone, this is Mr. Jenkins."

"Mr. Stone?" the elderly man looked at Jacob with interest. "As in Jacob Stone, the Librarian?"

Jacob tensed next to her. "How do you know me?"

"I am connected to the Library more than you think, Mr. Stone, but I thought all the remaining Librarians disappeared with it." Mr. Jenkins was watching Jacob like a miracle come true.

"We didn't. My Guardian was killed," Jacob told him and Eve felt a sudden pang of jealousy when she remembered that his Guardian used to be his lover as well. "And the last Librarian..."

"She became the Red Prophet," Eve finished for him.

"Oh dear," Mr. Jenkins sighed. "In that case it's much better and much worse than I imagined. A dark Librarian is always a great deal of trouble. And considering how fierce this dragon is..."

"You know which one it is?" Jacob looked like an overexcited puppy.

"It is the one that killed Beowulf," Jenkins announced and Jacob's face told Eve that this was not the answer he was hoping for. "The hero of the Saxon epic, Beowulf, was killed by a dragon. The beast was angry because someone stole a golden chalice from it's stash," Jenkins told Eve.

"That's the chalice she took!" Eve exclaimed. "She is going to return it to the dragon in exchange for it's service."

"But in the legend Beowulf's thane killed the dragon," said Jacob.

"Well, it seems he didn't kill it quite properly," Jenkins retorted.

"So what do we do?" Eve interrupted them, because she saw Jacob puffing up and getting ready to argue.

"Why, Colonel Baird, we do what every knight in the shining armor does – we slay the dragon."

"You know how to stop it?" Eve asked.

"Well, a bullet to the brain usually does the trick," Jenkins shrugged. "Even though this particular dragon might prove to be quite resilient."

"That is not the Librarian way!" Jacob protested.

"From what I heard, you haven't done things the Librarian way since you lost the Library. Wandering the world, killing Brotherhood members left and right, you seem to be more of a vigilante, don't you? But I guess peacemaking was easier when there actually was peace," Jenkins snorted.

Eve watched Jacob's shoulders slump and she remembered how he told her that the Library was a neutral ground for many supernatural elements and the Librarians acted as impartial judges of the magical world. That must have ended when the Library was lost and Jacob went on his hunt for magic.

"I can't give anyone what I don't have myself," Jacob said very quietly.

Suddenly all anger disappeared from Jenkins' face and the old man looked at Jacob with kindness and understanding. "We all have our demons, Mr. Stone, but running from them is not going to help for long. You have to face them. Then you will have peace."

After that the three of them were quiet for a very long time.

* * *

They started planning after lunch. Eve had seen the beast chained in the camp where she had been imprisoned and could tell them where it was.

"Yes, the chains are probably keeping it from accessing its magic," Jenkins told her. "Chained, it has about half the power it usually does and it can't breathe fire. We need to get it before they cut it free."

Jacob knew a lot about the mechanisms of the Prophet's clairvoyance.

"She talked about it a lot before she left, when she was trying to persuade us to go with her. It's a combination of deduction, math and magic. She deduces your past first, like Sherlock Holmes, from the little clues on your appearance. From that she deduces the future, at least that's how she described it. Magic fills in the holes, apparently," he explained.

"And this deductive process, what triggers it?" Jenkins asked.

"I think it's automatic, like a reflex. Whether or not she looks in the future, that's up to her, but I think she automatically figures out the past of everyone she sees without really meaning to."

"Very well, I think I have just the thing," Jenkins nodded. "Leave her to me."

Jacob looked nauseated. "What will you do to her?"

"Maybe nothing. Hopefully, it will incapacitate her long enough for you and Colonel Baird to deal with the dragon," Jenkins avoided a direct answer.

"And worse case scenario?" Jacob insisted.

"It won't kill her. Other than that... anything," the old man said.

Jacob briefly closed his eyes. "And the dragon?"

Mr. Jenkins reached under the table and laid an AK-47 on the table.


	7. Wolf Falls

The night patrol took them as deep in the war zone as they dared. From there they walked. Jenkins kept to himself and Eve and Jacob had mostly insignificant conversations. He told her about his childhood in Oklahoma and she told him the rare funny stories from her missions. He told her about the research plans he had and she told him about her wish to become a small town sheriff. He showed her a pool full of tadpoles and she tucked a moon daisy behind his ear.

"What do you want to do, after?" he asked when they stopped to eat and rest at noon. "I mean, not in the ideal future, where you get to be the sheriff, but if we get out of this alive and come back to the camp – what next?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. "Keep fighting. The world won't stop being a mess overnight, there'll be plenty of work for everyone. What about you?"

"It's time to get the Library back. Mr. Jenkins can help you guys hold the line for a while and I need to be a proper Librarian again," he replied. The Library would be cold and empty after all the years with his friends, but it was home.

 _She shall become your Guardian, no matter how much you resist..._

He would've asked Eve to join him, if the prophecy hadn't suggested exactly that. It was probably bound to happen anyway, but there was still a chance that Eve wasn't the woman Cassandra had been talking about, so he kept his mouth shut.

"We will meet again," Eve said suddenly with absolute certainty. "I don't know where or when, but we will meet again."

"How do you know?"

"One of my soldiers used to say that some people simply gravitate towards one another and no matter what happens, they always end up together. Maybe that's our case." She blushed and shook her head. "I think he knew what he was talking about, he had been divorced three times – the same woman in all three cases."

"Apparently those people tend to drift apart as well," Jacob remarked.

"Not really, they got married for the fourth time and this one looks pretty final, going on ten years," she told him with a nostalgic smile.

Jacob thought that he would gladly skip the three divorces to get to the final marriage, but didn't dare to say it out loud. This would never be an option for him.There would be no essays on the architecture of the oldest American churches, nor any star-shaped badge. They both knew that, they only talked about it to have something nice to think about.

It still was damn hard to accept.

"I don't mean to alarm you," Jenkins interrupted them, "but we're being surrounded."

His words were followed by a rain of bullets. They all took cover behind a fallen tree, checking their weapons. Rubens squeezed himself between Eve and Jacob.

"Twelve of them," Eve said. "They've learned their lesson."

"This is going to take some time," Jacob growled and cocked his gun.

"No, you two go ahead," Jenkins told them. "I can handle this and you need to get to the dragon."

"What about the Prophet?" Eve asked. "You can stop her, we can't."

"We are not here to stop her, we are here to kill the dragon. Just get out of here already, will you?"

Eve looked at Jacob, seeking help, but he was secretly glad that Jenkins was staying behind. It allowed him and Eve to stay together and it was safer for Cassandra. "He's right. We should get going."

Jenkins lifted his gun. "I do prefer swords, but, unfortunately," he shrugged, "these are much better at long distances."

Jacob tugged Eve's hand and together they crawled away through the undergrowth. Behind them gunfire echoed through the trees, but they did not look back.

* * *

They did take the binoculars, but they didn't need them to see the huge scaly body taking up half of the camp.

"It's still chained," Jacob whispered. "Maybe she isn't here yet."

"Or they just don't trust it very much," Eve suggested. "If we circle the camp and come from there, they won't see us," she pointed.

"How good smell do you think it has?" Jacob asked. The wind was coming from the wrong side.

"When was the last time you changed your socks?" she quipped and moved through the trees.

They met a single guard, whom they took out quickly and quietly. Twenty minutes later they were crouching just fifty meters from the beast. It seemed to be asleep, but after a couple of meetings with crocodiles, Jacob knew that the creatures that looked slow and clumsy could be awfully fast and agile when attacking.

"I go for the dragon, you cover me," he told Eve.

"You know I have more training with these than you have," she reminded him.

"That's why I'm taking the bigger target," he grinned.

She rolled her eyes, but agreed to the plan.

"Rubens, stay," he told the dog. He couldn't help in the gunfight. Rubens whimpered and sank to the ground, looking like a puppy. "I'm gonna pick you up later, now stay!"

Jacob straightened his back, checked his gun and looked at Eve, who was busy tying her hair in a ponytail.

 _She would put Queen Hippolyta to shame,_ he though. _There has never been a more beautiful or braver Amazon._

Reality was brought to his attention as Eve kissed him. It was just a quick peck on the lips, they didn't have time for anything else, but suddenly he felt like they could actually get out of this alive.

"Ready to go, Librarian?" she asked, a small smile playing on her lips.

"Ready to go, Guardian," he answered.

There was no use in lying to himself – she was his lioness with a mane of gold. And he fell for her.

* * *

 **Please, review and let me know what you think! Thank you!**


	8. Lioness Victorious

Eve found herself a cover behind a huge barrel of water, got ready and waited. Seconds later she heard shots as Jacob attacked the dragon. She heard the beast wake up and roar, but forced herself to stay still. The dragon was not her job, the soldiers running at them were.

She picked them off one by one, steady, methodical. After she killed the first few, the others got smarter, took cover, didn't show themselves much. But eventually each of them made a mistake and that was Eve's cue to take them down. Behind her Jacob was yelling and firing, the dragon's roar was deafening, but she didn't let herself lose focus. She lets one of the soldiers too close and it's all over.

But after a huge claw swung just centimeters over her head, she did turn around. The dragon was still held down by the chains wrapped around its body, wings and tail, but it was doing its best to rip them off. The metal was creaking under the strain and they were glowing bright blue. Eve was no expert in magic, but that didn't seem good. The bullets bounced off of the dragon's hide without any effect.

"The eye! The mouth!" she screamed at Jacob over her shoulder. "Hit it somewhere other that the scales!" More soldiers appeared and she had to look away from the dragon and the Librarian.

"Well, you try and hit that when it's swinging at ya!" he yelled back.

"Kinda busy here!"

"Y'know what? Get me a grenade, would ya?"

The soldiers got closer during the short exchange. Eve let one of them come six feet from her before she pulled the trigger. Then she rolled on the ground to his body and took one grenade from his belt.

"Jacob!"

She tossed it and he caught it as if they were doing something like that every day. Eve rolled back to her water barrel, took cover and concentrated on keeping the remaining soldiers where they were. Somehow she lost the track of time and the number of men who fell, but kept track of her bullets. It could have been a minute or maybe a century, but sixteen bullets later one of the roars behind her was cut short by a slightly muffled explosion. Something big sunk in a wooden crate just inches from her ear. When she looked closer, she saw that it was a huge tooth. Then something large hit the ground.

Everything went very, very quiet.

Eve looked back. There was a dragon carcass, it's mouth a mess, destroyed by the explosion. Jacob was standing over the dragon, panting, blood trickling down his temple from a gash on his forehead, hair disheveled, eyes sparkling with triumph. Eve thought that she had never seen anyone more attractive in her life.

Her musings were interrupted by a sound of footsteps. She turned around, ready to face a new challenge, but all she saw were the remaining Brotherhood soldiers throwing away their weapons and running to the woods in panic.

"You killed the dragon," she announced, feeling the words on her tongue.

When there was no answer, she looked over her shoulder and realized that Jacob was kneeling on the ground, holding something gray and shaggy in his arms.

"Oh no," she sighed and hurried to him.

Rubens' body was broken so badly that he barely resembled a dog. Jacob cradled his head, even though he was already dead, and wept. Eve knelt next to him and wrapped one arm around his shoulders. She had no idea when she started crying.

 _It's nothing,_ she reminded herself. _I've just killed at least six human beings. I have seen four more, my allies, my friends blown up in Lviv. And how many more lives I have seen taken, how many more have I taken during this war? What is one dog compared to them?_

And still, still she found tears for the dog where she couldn't find any for humans.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"He was... He was not trained very well. I should have left him in the camp..."

"He would have followed you anyway. You know that," she tried to console him. "He died a hero's death. Rubens the Dragonslayer."

Jacob sniffed and managed a small smile. She kissed him and felt his tears on her face. Suddenly, she froze and remembered the tiny cell in Nitra and the Prophet's dreamy smile.

 _You shall meet a wolf with sharp teeth hidden in his smile and you shall fall for him. You shall share a meal, you shall share a drink and you shell share tears. He shall not ask, but you shall give him your life regardless._

 _No,_ Eve thought. _It's not him. It can't be. I have not fallen for him. Also,_ she added in her thoughts, _I'm a really shitty liar._

Because she had, somewhere along the way. The feeling sneaked up upon her and now there was no way to get rid of it. The prophecy was already in motion and she would have to live it to the bitter end.

But not today. Today they won.

"Hey, we killed the dragon," she reminded him and helped him get up.

Jacob wiped his eyes with his sleeve and gave Rubens one last sad look.

"We should call Colonel Satley," Eve sighed heavily. "They can move in here, secure this position. And we should go back to look for Jenkins."

"It's weird," Jacob frowned.

"What, going back for Jenkins?"

"No, not that. She is not here. I was so sure that she would be here." Jacob bit his lip, looking around as if expecting the Prophet to jump out from behind a tree.

"Maybe she went out for a coffee?" Eve suggested. He was right, it didn't make any sense. She had had more than enough time to get the cup to the dragon. Why didn't she?

Jacob turned to her, his eyes becoming almost frantic. "We have to find her, Eve, she is dangerous..."

Over his shoulder Eve caught a glimpse of something bright red. The Prophet, in her signature red cape, emerged from the trees. There was a long silver dagger levitating in the air about a foot in front of her.

Their eyes met across the clearing and Eve felt like a mouse hypnotized by a snake. Jacob, still rambling, hadn't noticed anything yet. Then the Prophet registered the dead dragon and her delicate features twisted in sheer fury. She made a stabbing motion with her hand and the dagger flew straight at Jacob's back.

There was no time to warn him, words would take too long. So Eve did the only thing she could – she shoved him out of the way, fully aware that with him gone, she was the first solid thing in the dagger's path.

She saw his surprise and confusion as he fell and the words of the prophecy echoed in her head.

 _He shall not ask, but you shall give him your life regardless._

 _I didn't expect it so soon,_ she thought in the split of second between the dagger piercing her chest and the world exploding in pain.


	9. New Wolf

He didn't catch her.

That was the first thing that went through his head. After so many years of being there for Cassie whenever her brain grape became too much, the first thing he felt guilty about now was not catching Eve as she fell.

He knew that Cassandra was approaching, that he should probably get ready to fight, but all he could do was crawl to Eve.

"Hey," she smiled at him through the pain as he gently cradled her in his arms.

"Hey there, Miss Colonel," he returned the smile. Somehow he managed to hold it together, to be strong for her.

"You hide your teeth when you smile," she told him. "My wolf."

"Not a huntsman, then?" he teased her.

"Never," she chuckled and moaned in pain immediately.

That brought him back to reality and he looked up. Cassandra was only a few steps from them, murder in her eyes, another dagger in her hand. She probably thought that the old fashioned way would be safer than telekinesis.

She paused when he looked at her and her eyes wandered between him and Eve for a second before they widened with realization. _She told us both a prophecy,_ Jacob thought. _And at least mine is coming true. Does she know?_

He could remember the exact way her voice sounded in the Library. _You shall meet a lioness with a mane of gold and you shall fall for her. She shall become your Guardian, no matter how much you resist. One grief, one fleeting moment of glory, one last goodbye, that's all you will share before the end._

"Kill me," he dared her. "Finish the job."

Eve tried to move, probably to protest, but she groaned and sank back to his arms instead. He expected Cassandra to drive the blade through his heart and was surprised to see her drop the dagger.

"I can't," she said, sounding a little surprised, but mostly sad. "Not you, not like this, not in cold blood. You're all I have left in the world, Jake."

For a second they stared each other in the eye and he could almost see the old Cassandra there, his rambling, over-excited Librarian. For that second he could almost believe she was back.

"Miss Cillian!" A voice rang across the clearing.

Jenkins stood there, his bow tie askew and there was a splatter of blood on his sleeve, but otherwise he looked just as they left him. Cassandra stared at him with a look of horror on her face.

"All that pain of all those years," she whispered. "How do you keep breathing?"

Then she wailed so quietly only Jacob could hear and fainted.

He didn't catch her either.

Instead, he turned back to Eve. She was fading fast and there wasn't much he could do but hold her.

"Find the Library," she told him. "You don't have to fight harder, you have to fight smarter."

Even though she hadn't seen it, she understood the purpose of the Library and the Librarian perfectly and pinpointed the exact mistake he had made. He was fighting like a soldier, using his muscles instead of his brain, and that was the reason why he couldn't get anything right.

"Roger that, ma'am," he smiled.

"I liked Miss Colonel better." Her words were barely more than a whisper. "We would have made a great team," she added.

"The greatest," he agreed.

"What a shame." He had to bend down to her lips to catch her last words. "Goodbye, my wolf."

"Goodbye, my lioness."

A last shadow of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth before she sighed and relaxed.

One last goodbye. The prophecy was fulfilled.

His brain, confused by the enormousness of the grief it couldn't handle at once, urged him to get her out of there, away from the dragon carcass and the unconscious prophet. There were trees and shade on the other side of the camp, she would like that.

So he picked her up and carried her, just like the first time when he found her in the stream.

Only this time she didn't feel heavy at all.

* * *

The military, taking a risk and arriving in a helicopter that very day, took her body. There was a family somewhere, they said, and they would claim it. Jacob let them. He knew that the pain of her death would hit him later and he would spend a few days drinking or picking fights or simply staring at the wall. He could feel the breakdown building up in his head and his heart, but it was not ready yet. Once he was far enough from Colonel Satley's curious eyes, he would mourn her, but not today. Not here.

They took her body, so he buried only Rubens and the Brotherhood soldiers. As he stood over their graves, he remembered, how Eve urged him to fight smarter, not harder.

 _A Librarian should not have a body count this big,_ he thought. _Time to change the tactic._

There was a sound of soft footsteps and Jenkins and Cassandra joined him.

She woke up after all, but something in her brain fried. Her eyes were unable to focus on anything and she kept muttering nonsense. Jenkins managed to change her out of her signature red outfit, gave her some normal clothes and convinced Colonel Satley that she was just a mad girl they found captive in the camp. Nobody would believe them that this was the famous Red Prophet.

"What happened to her?" Jacob asked.

"She saw my past," Jenkins replied simply. "And considering that I have been around for some two thousand years, it was too much for her."

"Who are you?"

"That, Mr. Stone, is a question for another day. I will wait in the car that Colonel Satley lent us. I assume there is a matter of a missing library that requires our attention?"

"There is. Thank you, Mr. Jenkins."

Jenkins responded with a small bow and left him alone with the shell of a girl.

"I can see it all," Cassandra told him in a sudden moment of clarity. "All the paths that the world could have taken. I can't sort through it, there are so many. Infinite number of universes, each just a little different from the others. So many wolves, so many lionesses."

"Do any of them get a happily ever after?" he asked.

But the moment of sanity was gone and Cassandra was once again lost in her own world.

 _Infinite number of universes..._ He imagined it and for a moment he could see it the way Cassandra did, the images of him and Eve in all the different timelines. In some of them they never met at all. In some of them they were friends who have never fallen in love, or she was his Guardian and died for him, or they died together, or he died first. But in some of them they were simply Jacob and Eve and they were together. And maybe in one of them they were gray-haired and wrinkled and babysitting their grandchildren.

 _If there is such a universe, that's good enough for me,_ he thought. _Or, one day it will be enough. One day it will be a consolation._

Cassandra shivered next to him. He wrapped his coat over her shoulders and steered her away from the graves.

"C'mon, Cassie, let's go. We have work to do."

She was all he had left in the world, after all. At least in this one.

* * *

 **So? What do you think? Tell me in the reviews!**


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